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The row is reminiscent of the 2015 debate over 'the dress', belonging to a mother-of-the bride.

An image of the garment was first posted on Tumblr by Caitlin McNeill, a 21-year-old aspiring singer from Scotland, after noticing her friends saw different colours in the photograph.

The image has became an online sensation, with posts arguing over the dress's original colours - and science behind the debate - being viewed and shared millions of times.

Even celebrities weighed in on the fashion debate, with Kim Kardashian asking her 29.4million Twitter followers to help settle a disagreement between herself and husband Kanye West.

And #TheDress started trending worldwide on Twitter as the debate when global. At 3.15pm this afternoon, there had been more than 1 million tweets mentioning the hashtag.

Andrew Lotery, Professor of Ophthalmology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton, told MailOnline that the difference in perception could be due to lighting conditions, the device the image is being viewed on and even a person’s age and gender.

He explained that everyone has different combinations of the genes that create the sense of colour for red, green and blue and because these genes are on the X chromosome, women tend to have more variations.

As a result, women have a more dynamic range of colour so may be more susceptible and sensitive to specific colours. This may explain why women flip between seeing the different colours, and men typically don’t.

He added that some people have more than one ‘dose’ of a blue colour gene, as an example, so they will see higher or lower levels of this colour, too.

Additionally, as people get older their perception of colour changes.

The lens of the eye gradually yellows with age and this exposes more blue, continued Professor Lotery.

This will influence how deep or strong a colour appears and could explain why older people may see the blues and blacks rather than the whites and golds.